


Love in the Air

by Sadsnail



Series: Dumbledore Insert [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Kid Fic, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29321892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sadsnail/pseuds/Sadsnail
Summary: Inserted into Dumbledore and de-aged to a four-year-old child, SI decides to fix it all. Snape is there, playing hapless father to the little eager beaver.—Severus receives Valentines chocolates. Albus sends a card.
Relationships: Severus Snape & Original Character(s)
Series: Dumbledore Insert [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579501
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18





	Love in the Air

Classes were finished for the day, the third years had just escaped in a faster than usual rush and it was only me and Dad in the potions classroom.

It had been an exciting day for most of the school. Outside, singing goblins were still casting glitter everywhere and valentine's cards fluttered through the halls in a constant stream. Both Dad and Minerva had been muttering that someone’s eye was going to be poked out, but it hadn’t happened yet and the only thing Poppy had to sort was the candy and cards she got from her admirers. I had sent her a homemade card—Dad refused to let me waste money on buying any—and she had sent me a candied rose which I was saving for later tonight.

With the students gone, Dad finally had a free moment to look at his gift.

I have never seen anyone hate anything as much as Bat Dad did the heart-shaped box of chocolates on his desk. It was pink. And with pink I mean _pink_. From the box to the ribbon to the words on it, all in different shades of pink. There was only one place this could have come from. Madam Puddifoot’s.

Some days it was easier to figure out what Dad was thinking than others. Over the years he had relaxed around me, and did not put so much effort into maintaining the spy’s mask when it was just the two of us. His top lip was currently curling in clear disgust and his eyes raised from the box to search me out.

“Is it poisoned?” he asked me.

“How would I know?”

“You didn’t send it?”

“You didn’t let me go to the shops, remember? And why would you immediately think I’d poison it if I did send it?”

“Because I wouldn’t let you go to the shops.” He said it with a placating smile that did not do anything to smooth my ruffled feathers.

“It wasn’t me.” I snorted rudely. “I wouldn’t waste my money on you. Besides, you got my card in the morning.”

It’d been one of my better efforts. Black skulls with purple roses growing from their eye sockets, the skulls bleeding where enormous thorns pricked the bone. Yes, I knew bone couldn’t bleed. There was such a thing as artistic license, you know. I couldn’t think of a way to make the text inside rhyme so I had just written that the card could have been candy if he wasn’t so stingy with my allowance. For some weird reason, Dad liked the honest cards the best.

“I don’t think it’s poisoned,” I said, still a bit miffed. “Would your enemies send you little pink hearts? Can I have one?” Well, I said one but two or three would be preferable. I leaned over to have a better look. Four maybe. There was enough to share, I counted twenty tiny pink hearts with cutesy messages that flashed on and off in darker pink, glittery, delectable sugar. _Be mine. Sugarplum. I <3 U. King of my Heart. Snookums._ My mouth watered despite the stupid words.

We haven’t made the rounds at the sweet shops in awhile, and with Percy now a teacher also, my secondary candy source was drying up.

“It would look like I’m giving you preferential treatment,” Percy had said just yesterday. It wouldn’t do for my image as a professor.”

“Image shmimage, Percy. I’m eight, it’s still years before I’ll go to school and you’re just the assistant, it doesn’t count now.” I was not being rude, just stating the facts. Binns was finally retiring and Percy would take over once he had proven himself. That was a new rule set in place after the Lockhart debacle, one that I insisted on when Minerva still listened to me. I held my hand out. “What do you have in your pocket?”

“Sour drops.” He grinned.

I lowered my hand, my mouth already pinching shut at the mere mention of the sourest sweets in existence. If you see anyone walking around with a handkerchief in front of their mouth they had most likely just sucked one. Just the merest lick and you drooled and slobbered like a dog. “I hate you.”

“Don’t say that. Have you done your homework?”

Ugh, homework. Dad was homeschooling me to catch me up on all the differences in their world and he had enlisted Percy to fill in when he was too busy himself. That was my cue to go. I turned on my heel faster than you could cast a Bat-Bogey Hex and his laughter followed me down the hall.

* * *

“Stop that,” Dad said and slapped my hand away when I reached for a chocolate. “We don’t know who sent it.”

“Yes, we do. Someone that luurves you.”

“Albus.”

“Miss Hoffman,” I offered. The new Muggle studies assistant. We were starting to think that subject was cursed; assistants didn’t last longer than a year. A very familiar occurrence. Only this time they did not die, worse, _they married_. “I saw her coming from Hogsmeade yesterday. She’s been making googly eyes at you.”

“She hasn’t.” He sounded horrified.

“She has.” I tried to imagine her as my mum. Small and blonde, she was sometimes mistaken for a fifth year and enjoyed Quidditch. Really enjoyed Quidditch. Every spare moment she was up in the sky, egging the students for another game. I bet she would forget to make dinner. “If it’s hers you need to send it back, you’re not allowed to marry her.”

“I’m not going to marry anyone. Ever.”

“Famous last words, Dad.” I knocked on the wood and glared at him until he did the same with a roll of his eyes. “Just don’t marry her.”

“Alright, I’ll give. Why shouldn’t I marry her?”

“You’re in luurve!”

“Albus, what had I just said?”

I stopped teasing. “Quidditch.” We both shuddered. We weren’t fans of flying. Yet. Later I would get used to it, between the Weasleys and Charlotte I would have no option. For now, I shuddered. Taking his distraction as an opportunity, I snatched at a pink heart and had one in my grubby little fist—yeah, I admit it, hygiene was for girls—but Super Dad’s hand closed around mine as fast as a snake.

“Drop it.”

“Aww, Dad!”

“Albus it could be poisoned. It could be filled with Amortentia. There’s no way I’m going to let you even lick one. With your luck, you’d fall in love with a two-headed doxy. Drop. It.”

I dropped it back into its little heart-shaped hollow and Bat Dad cast an Aguamenti on my hand before wiping it clean with a handkerchief. Then he sent me off to wash my hands anyway at the row of sinks that lined the side of the classroom, muttering something derisory about eight-year-old boys being dirt magnets.

“Nearly nine.”

“Not for another year. Wash properly.”

“Maybe it was Percy.” I turned the tap on, still mulling over the chocolates. “Between the two of you, I’m getting mummed more than any other kid in the world. Maybe he thinks it’s time to make it official. If it was Percy then I could eat some, he wouldn’t do anything to it.”

“Percy’s met a girl,” Dad said. What? I turned around, splashing my sleeves. Later I would be irritated at that, now I had more urgent issues. Dad was busy frowning at the little heart-shaped card that had accompanied the box. ‘From your secret admirer,’ it said, his admirer being a very unoriginal type, and he didn’t even notice me gaping at him. “I’m not his type,” he continued absently, frowning at the pink card.

“Percy’s met a girl? When was I going to be told! Who is she? Where did he meet her? Is he going to marry her? Dad!”

“Ah.” Dad coloured and dropped the card, looking guilty. “Albus, calm down, he was going to tell you soon—”

“Oh, he was going to tell me soon? When? Christmas?!” I don’t know about you but the words ‘calm down’ had never had that effect on me. Quite the opposite. Forget my damn hands. I needed to speak to Percy and right now.

But Dad had other ideas. The classroom door shimmered yellow just as I reached it, locking me in. “Dad!”

“I’m not stopping you, Albus, just delaying you. You can go talk with him when you’ve calmed down. I promise you’ll appreciate it later.”

I was never going to calm down. How dare he not tell me? I thought we were close! It was one thing thinking he might end up with dad, but a girl! I even made him a—Oh, God. My stomach twisted. I had sent Percy a card. _One that rhymed._ He would have received it already. I sank down on the floor. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. I could just pretend it had been a friendly card… “Dad!”

Bat Dad left off his investigation and crossed the room to pick me up. “Shh. I’m sorry, Albus. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying!” But I was and I stuck my face into his neck when I realised. “You said it’s okay to cry,” I reminded him.

“So, I did. Shh.”

* * *

Severus Snape had four years practice in mopping up my tears—especially early on when crying had been my thing—and I dare say he was an expert in it by now. He held me tight while I clung miserably to him, did not complain about the snot in his neck, and soon enough I started to calm down. My tears slowly dried up. There was only one other person so effective… ah, there were still more tears left it seemed.

“Do you want to go talk to him?” Dad asked when I finally collected myself. We sat behind his desk, myself on his lap, snuggling tired into his hug. He rested his chin on my head and I could feel it move against my skull when he talked.

“No.” I never wanted to look at Percy again.

“All right. Would you like to help me with these chocolates?”

“I don’t want any.”

“We’re not going to eat them, we’re going to test them for poison.”

That worked to perk me up some. “I can help?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Properly help, not just hand you things.” A certain tentacle incident still had repercussions. “I get to mix stuff.”

“Yes.” I could hear him grin. “I’ll even transfigure a pair of goggles and a white coat and you can go Muahaha.”

“A big sorcerer’s hat. Scientist was last year,” I told him. “With gold stars on. And we can keep some aside for me to eat if there’s no poison?”

“No. I’ll buy you your own box from Madam Puddifoot's. If ever I get a signed box you may eat from it.”

“Next year I’ll get you a signed box,” I promised him, getting off his lap to yank him to the back room. “A big one so we can share.” That was a good plan. Bat Dad didn’t like sweet things so the bigger the box the more there would be for me. “It doesn’t have to be from Madam Puddifoot’s.” Hers was only pink. Honeydukes had anatomically correct ones that pumped blood.

* * *

Checking chocolates for poison was nearly as much fun as eating them.

Dad transfigured our clothes into matching midnight blue robes, made us two very tall pointy hats on which gold stars moved erratically about, brought out long white gloves that ended at our elbows, and turned my glasses into oversized goggles.

We agreed that sorcerers also went Muahaha after every sentence and he was if anything louder than me. A parchment and quill floated around our heads noting each experiment down and very soon the back room was filled with a mixture of green and purple smoke which necessitated bubblehead charms. Chocolates were fizzling like mini volcanoes in a numbered row and we cackled madly when one exploded, forcing Sorcerer Dad to throw up a shield.

Despite all the exciting reactions none of them had been poisoned. “I told you so,” I told him on the way to dinner. “I could have had some.”

“Don’t ever eat anything if you don’t know who gave it.”

“Who do you think gave it?”

“I don’t care.”

“Because it wasn’t poisoned? Maybe if you announce it at dinner. Say something like thank you for the gift but in the future sign it so that Albus can eat some.”

“And then they sign someone else’s name.” He ducked when a stray card zipped past us. “Better not help them improve their schemes.”

“But it wasn’t poisoned.” Really. Was it so hard for him to think someone might like him?

“That we know.” He nudged me into the Great Hall, ahead of him. The room was already filled with students looking forward to the Valentine’s Feast, pink and red streamers floating above their heads. Someone was overdoing it with all the pink and I had a horrible idea it was Minerva. “We only tested for the more common ones.”

“Who’s poisoning who?” Miss Hoffman asked as she entered behind us.

“Nothing important,” Dad said. _Then he lied._ “I saw you playing Quidditch today. Had fun?”

 _Liar,_ I mouthed up at him. He hadn’t moved from the classroom, too irritated with all the joyful pink exuberance in the halls, the Bat. _Liar who lies,_ I thought at him while Miss Hoffman babbled about the game.

“You may have a second helping of pudding,” Dad said past Miss Hoffman’s chatter.

I knew a bribe when I heard one—thank you, Charlotte—and stopped thinking at him. A white lie didn’t hurt anyone. “I was going to anyway.”

I forgot all about it when we reached the teacher’s table and I caught sight of red hair. My stomach clenched. My usual seat was between Dad and Percy but tonight I rushed to sit in Dad’s chair and gripped the seat tight in case he had any thoughts to transfer me to my own. He didn’t. He messed up my hair in passing and took my seat for himself, greeting Percy and blocking my sight.

* * *

Out of sight, out of mind worked for me and I enjoyed the feast. The elves had gone out of their way this year. Most of the vegetables were heart-shaped and red, and the students had a fine old time playing guess which one was broccoli. Chocolate fountains appeared at the end of the meal, bringing the feast to satisfactory completion, the treat as tasty as it was messy.

“Bath,” Dad said when I sat back with a groan, unable to eat another bite. “You have chocolate in your hair.”

“Carry me.”

“You can walk, it will help with your digestion.”

I pulled a face at him and sulked. If he carried me I could hide from Percy. I could pretend to be sleepy, which I actually was after all this food. But when Dad stood up I saw that Percy had already gone.

“He had to go supervise a detention,” Dad said and I pretended not to hear him. I hadn’t asked, had I? Anyway, it was a relief. I figured I had three years in which I could avoid him easily, I knew his schedule by heart. After that, I would have class with him but perhaps by then, he would have forgotten my very flowery declaration. Oh, God.

“Stop thinking.”

“I’m going to be sick.”

“It will be from the chocolate. How many marshmallows did you stuff in your face?”

“Fourteen.”

“A new record,” he said dryly. “You must be proud.”

The walk and Dad’s exaggerated disgust at my eating prowess worked to take my mind off certain things. On the way, he had to break up a fight between three girls over Harry, which was fun to witness but took forever to sort. I was happy enough to take a bath and go to bed when we reached our rooms.

Lying in bed, I eyed Poppy’s rose and wondered if I had space in my stomach for a petal and would I have to brush my teeth for just one, when a short knock on my door interrupted my musings and Percy entered, looking contrite. “Hello, squirt.”

I yanked the sheet over my head.

* * *

Fin.

Happy Valentine's Day!


End file.
